GUADALAJARA, Mexico (AP) – A unique tennis tournament born during the pandemic is coming to Mexico for the first time. The Ultimate Tennis Showdown (UTS), created by coach Patrick Mouratoglou, will be held in the western city of Guadalajara next year, the organizers announced on Sunday.
Mouratoglou, who for many years coached the American star Serena Williams, created a new tennis league in 2020, when professional sports stopped due to the coronavirus pandemic.
“It is a new tournament in which eight players will participate for four days in a new way,” said Gustavo Santoscoy GarcÃa, from GS Sports Management, the organizing company. “In this first edition we have Nick Kyrgios, Casper Ruud, Denis Shapolavov and Flavio Cobolli.”
The tournament will take place from February 14 to 16, 2025 at the Pan American Tennis Center in Guadalajara and will distribute a prize pool of $1.4 million, 420,000 of which will be awarded to the winning tennis players.
The UTS started without spectators in France in June 2020 when the WTA and ATP tournaments were suspended due to the pandemic. Since then they’ve been making headlines in different parts of the world, but not in Latin America.
“Guadalajara will be the first Latin American country where we are going, we have already tested the idea in Europe and the United States and we had to come to this region where the fans are exciting,” said Mouratoglou. “I know they have the WTA tournament (in Guadalajara) and now we will bring them men’s tennis with a high personality.”
The league uses rules different from regular tennis, in which four out of every eight minutes are played, players use microphones to be heard, and spectators can make as much noise as they want. during the match.
“Tennis fans are getting old and this is a problem for the sport. “Tennis is the best sport in the world, but people under 40 don’t follow it, people consume sport differently than we do,” added the coach.
In the current season, Andrey Rublev won the tournament in Oslo, Gael Monfils was crowned in New York before the US Open and the final place is Frankfurt in October and the final will be held in London in December.